The inventive concepts disclosed herein relate generally to the field of weather detection. More particularly, the inventive concepts disclosed herein relate to detecting storm tops of weather cells.
Thunderstorms are a violent example of atmospheric convection that include uplifts and cooling of air and subsequent cloud formation. As a cloud forms, water vapor changes to liquid and/or to frozen cloud particles resulting in a large release of heat that becomes the principal source of energy for the developing cloud. The cloud particles grow by colliding and combining with each other, forming rain, snow, and/or hail. High level winds may shear the cloud top into an anvil shape. When droplets become heavy enough to fall against an updraft in the cloud, precipitation begins. Once precipitation begins the updraft weakens and is joined by a downdraft generated by the precipitation. This updraft-downdraft couplet constitutes a single storm cell. A typical storm is composed of multiple cells that form, survive for about half an hour, and then weaken and disperse. In some circumstances, new cells may replace old cells making it possible for some storms to continue for up to several hours.
Storm tops are hazards to aircraft. Conventionally, pilots use weather radar scans to detect and avoid hazardous weather. Effectively and efficiently identifying and predicting storm tops using a weather radar is especially beneficial for pilots that need to fly over or around the storm cell to avoid the hazardous weather. Weather radar systems are capable of detecting precipitation and variations of the refractive index in the atmosphere that may be generated by local variations of temperature or humidity. The returned signal from the transmitted pulse encountering a weather target has an amplitude, a phase, and a polarization. The amplitude may be used to determine the reflectivity and to estimate the mass of precipitation per unit volume or the intensity of precipitation through the use of empirical relationships.
Some modern weather radar systems automatically perform a volume scan consisting of a series of full azimuth rotations of the antenna at several elevation angles. The raw polar data may be stored for further data processing and archiving. Using application software, a wide variety of meteorological products may be generated and displayed as images on a display system. Grid or pixel values and conversion to x-y coordinates are computed using three-dimensional interpolation techniques. Each image pixel represents a color-coded value of a selected variable such as the reflectivity, the rainfall rate, and/or other meteorological parameters.
Turbulence is the leading cause of in-flight injuries to passengers and cabin crews on aircraft. A high turbulence region may exist above a storm cell, but is difficult to detect with radar due to the low reflectivity. However, if a weather radar system can detect and predict the location of a high turbulence region with sufficient response time, aircraft may more effectively avoid these regions.
A need exists for a weather radar system that efficiently detects the height of storm cells while minimizing the number of scans needed to accurately detect storm tops. What is further needed are systems and methods for predicting a change in the height of the storm cell so aircraft can better respond to changing conditions and so aircraft pilots have a more accurate understanding of weather conditions along flight paths. Such storm top detection systems and methods would make air travel safer, more efficient, and lead to fewer weather-related flight implications for aircraft.